It's like the other teams don't even want to win

The Cubs waived a whole boatload of talent, and it all cleared. Plus, free agent rumors.

Actual photo of the Cubs shoving David Bote onto the waiver wire.

We talked and wrote a lot about the Cubs 40-man roster crunch and how they’d be sure to lose all kinds of quality talent just because they have too darn many good players to choose from.

And sure enough, they had to put the following studs on waivers where any of the other 29 teams could snap them up for the low-low cost of their 2023 salary:

• Franmil Reyes

• David Bote

• Alec Mills

• Brad Wieck

• Steven Brault

• Narciso Crook

• Anderson Espinoza

• Esteban Quiroz

• Jared Young

Holy crap! It’s like an All-Star team or something. Whew. So how many of them did they lose? Seven? Eight?

None.

Not a one of those potential superstars were claimed by any other team. Jed, you magnificent bastard, you’ve done it again.

And then, on Monday, the team parted ways with the greatest rain delay speechmaker ever, Jason Heyward. Unless a team claims him on waivers (and I’m sure there will be a fistfight at the waiver machine) the Cubs will just eat the final $22 million of the eight-year, $184 million deal they signed him to before the 2016 season. Over the first seven years of that contract, Heyward hit .245/.323/.377 with 62 homers and 289 RBI. Yes, he hit as many homers in seven seasons with the Cubs as Aaron Judge hit last year.

Heyward’s OPS+ for the Cubs was 86. Does that mean he was better than 86% of the players in MLB over that span? Uh, no. Actually it doesn’t. It means if you had simply hired a league average right fielder for those seven seasons at the league minimum salary, that player would have outperformed Heyward by 14%.

His greatest legacies will be two things. 1) In 2,522 at bats for the Cubs he grounded out to second base 2,521 times.¹ 2) He scared the Garbage Family That Owns The Cubs™ from ever offering a big, long-term contract to anyone else, ever.